Crania of Aboriginal Americans. 110 



which can only be fully appreciated when they come to be 

 compared with similar measurements derived from the other 

 races of men." We shall state, in a subsequent part of thig 

 article, the conclusions at which Dr Morton has arrived, in 

 consequence of his observations and measurements ; mean- 

 time it is important to state the principles on which he pro- 

 ceeded. 



In a few years, it will appear a singular fact in the history 

 of mind, that in the nineteenth century, men holding the emi- 

 nent station in literature occupied by Lord Jeffrey and Lord 

 Brougham, should have seriously denied* that the mind, in 

 this world, acts by means of material organs ; yet such is the 

 case ; and the denial can be accounted for only by that entire 

 neglect of physiology, as a branch of general education, which 

 prevailed in the last century, and by the fact that the meta- 

 physical philosophy in which they were instructed, bore no 

 reference to the functions of the brain. We need not say, 

 that no adequately instructed naturalist doubts that the brain 

 is the organ of the mind. But there are two questions, on 

 which great difference of opinion continues to prevail ; 1*/, 

 Whether the size of the brain (health, age, and constitution 

 being ec[ual) has any, and if so, what influence, on the power 

 of mental manifestation i And, 26?/y, Whether different 

 faculties be, or be not, manifested by particular portions of 

 the brain. 



The first proposition, that the size of the brain, other con- 

 ditions being equal, is in direct relation to the power of mental 

 manifestation, is supported by analogy, by several well known 

 facts, and by high physiological authorities. The power of 

 smell, for example, is great in proportion to the expansion of 

 the olfactory nerve on the internal nostrils, and the volume of 

 the nerve itself bears a direct relation to the degree of that 

 expansion. The superficial surface of the mucous membrane 

 of the ethmoidal bone, on which the nerve of smell is ramified, 

 is computed in man to extend to 20 square inches, and in the 

 seal, which has great power of smell, to 120 square inches. 



* Lord Jeffrey, in the Edin. Review, No. 88, and Lord Brougham in his 

 Discourse on Natural Theology, p. 120; 



